When Will I Have My Meat Dress Moment?

A reflection on Lady Gaga, being unemployed, and just, like, girl stuff!

Well, I’m 22 years old, the relatively new owner of two A-cup breasts, and I really thought I would be famous by now. Not just famous. But, like, Lady Gaga-famous. I want to descend a flight of stairs wearing nothing but a leotard and sunglasses made of lamb chops and make people cream their goddamn jeans from adoring me so hard. I want my Meat Dress Moment. Or perhaps my *Impossible Meat* Dress Moment as food politics have changed somewhat since the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards. A Tofu Halter Top, maybe? I’m still workshopping it.

It’s a funny feeling when your inner world does not match your outer circumstance. I remember playing Bakugan with some kids in my third grade homeroom and thinking, “What are these fucking clowns doing? I want to be on Sonny With a Chance.” To be fair, I was also just really bad at Bakugan (read:gay).

Or today, for instance. I am an unemployed, (begrudgingly) transexual college dropout with the only skill on my resume being “Conversational Spanish'' (lie). And yet here I am: sitting at my desk drinking a coffee I can’t afford while writing an essay that I have blind certainty will somehow be featured in “Shouts and Murmurs.” Or at the very least that “Pink News” section on Snapchat that features articles like “You’ll Never Guess Which of These Former Child Stars is a Verse Bottom.”

I think the worst part about never meeting one’s expectations for oneself is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A month ago, I lost out on a semi-major career opportunity. I was cast in an off-Broadway (fine, off-off-Broadway) play about transexual hookers. Shocker, I know. (I didn’t even have to audition, randomly. The director just looked me up and down and was like, “Yeah, slutty.” Then I had to present him with some documentation indicating the amount of active STIs I currently had). But anyway, about three weeks into production, the show was called off due to lack of funding. I was gutted. After a year-and-a-half of working odd jobs and paying for my sugar-free Redbull in all quarters as I waited for something–anything– to give, I finally got a break. And the rug was pulled right out from under me before it was even made. Or woven? Vacuumed? Fuck me.

So, I did what any delusional, fame-obsessed narcissist would do when something doesn’t go their way: stayed in bed for three weeks and did nothing but vape and watch videos of Korean women eating absurd amounts of crustaceous seafood. I cried endlessly on the phone to my boyfriend about how “the universe is out to get me!” and “everything I touch turns to shit!” Like, okay, Kim, there’s people that are dying.

I was so hyper-fixated on the fact that I was somehow owed more from the world that I collapsed into self-pity and despair instead of taking any proactive steps to actually do something about it. And so, the cycle of wanting, getting, losing, giving up continues. Rinse, vape, Korean lobster, repeat.

But today was different. I woke up and yawned and stretched my legs and thanked them for always taking me where I need to go. I made my coffee the way I like it. I fed the dog and thought, “How lovely is it? How special that this helpless, smelly little creature depends on me to survive? How gratifying it feels to care for something other than myself.”

She then proceeded to take a hot, steamy piss directly on my left foot.

I’m definitely not Lady Gaga today, but I’d like to think I’m one step closer.

xoxo monsters

Wickham ;)